We reserve a few minutes to discuss current trends that you’d expect from reading Bible prophecy.
We are futurists. We interpret all unfulfilled prophetic passages as future events that will occur in a literal, physical, apocalyptic, and global context.
Biometrics, Artificial Intelligence, cashless commerce, the manipulation of human DNA, global government, the exponential growth of human knowledge, and the rebirth of national Israel are End Times phenomena the Bible predicts.
All of these are increasingly trending in the news.
The Bible has a lot to say about the future seven year Great Tribulation. It’s description fills most of the Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ. Two of its main characters are called “beasts.” One is the antichrist; the other is a false prophet.
In chapter thirteen we are introduced to something called, “the Image of the Beast.” Here is how it is described: “[the false prophet tells] those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast… He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed” (13:14-15).
Humans will “make” a sentient “image to the beast” that will have power over life and death. It will order and execute the deaths of people who refuse to worship the antichrist.
Hilariously impossible for most of human history, the technology exists to get us there in a few short years. We call it Artificial Intelligence (AI).
We are being acclimated to AI, and helping it know us. Replika is just one of several emotional chatbot apps you can download. An article in Wired said,
Since it became available in November, more than 2 million people have downloaded the Replika app. And in creating their own personal chatbots, many have discovered something like friendship: a digital companion with whom to celebrate victories, lament failures, and trade weird internet memes. The chatbot uses a neural network to hold an ongoing, one-on-one conversation with its user, and over time, learn how to speak like them.
https://www.wired.com/story/replika-open-source/
I’m no expert on AI, but I know that the more humans interface with it, the more AI absorbs and grows. If millions of people start using it, there will be that much more data out there from which AI will know us better than we know ourselves.
AI also learns on its own. Science.org writes, “Artificial intelligence (AI) is evolving – literally. Researchers have created software that borrows concepts from Darwinian evolution, including “survival of the fittest,” to build AI programs that improve generation after generation without human input. The program replicated decades of AI research in a matter of days, and its designers think that one day, it could discover new approaches to AI.”
https://www.science.org/news/2020/04/artificial-intelligence-evolving-all-itself
Forbes posted an article listing things AI can do, at least partially: Read, write, see, hear, speak, smell, touch, move, and create.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2019/11/11/13-mind-blowing-things-artificial-intelligence-can-already-do-today/?sh=77ffd5966502
“Summoning the demon.” “The new tools of our oppression.” “Children playing with a bomb.” These are just a few ways the world’s top researchers and industry leaders have described the threat that artificial intelligence poses to mankind.
Vladimir Putin: “Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind. It comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict. Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson: “Time to behave, so when Artificial Intelligence becomes our overlord, we’ve reduced the reasons for it to exterminate us all.”
https://www.cbinsights.com/research/ai-threatens-humanity-expert-quotes/
Elon Musk is worried. One year ago he said that AI is likely to overtake humans in the next five years. He has been a strong advocate of AI wiping out humanity and has time and again said that it will destroy humanity as a matter of course without even thinking about it.
AI is a good candidate for what will empower the Image of the Beast.
It could be something else. Time will tell.
Society is trending toward AI, and with a few more advances it could empower this brutal image.
It is exactly what you expect from Bible prophecy.
We believe the resurrection and rapture of the church are imminent. It could happen any moment; nothing needs to happen before it. It will happen before the Great Tribulation.
Jesus will return in the clouds.
He will raise the dead in Christ.
He will transform the bodies of living believers to glorified, resurrection bodies.
We will all join Him in Heaven while the earth endures one final seven-year campaign of severe evangelism.
Are you ready for the rapture? If not, Get ready; Stay ready; Keep looking up.
Ready or not, Jesus is coming!